It hangs over the water about the height of a ship’s mast, and we can see something below it like a boat riding at anchor, with the white sea raging around her.’ ‘Now drop the curtain,’ said Meggie; ‘I am no stranger, my lasses, to sights and noises like these—sights and noises of another world; but I have been taught that God is nearer to me than any spirit can be; and so have learned not to be afraid.’
— from Demonology and Devil-lore by Moncure Daniel Conway

It is so indeed—Charles—they give into all the substantial Luxuries of the Table—and abstain from nothing but wine and wit—Oh, certainly society suffers by it intolerably—for now instead of the social spirit of Raillery that used to mantle over a glass of bright Burgundy their conversation is become just like the Spa water they drink which has all the Pertness and flatulence of champaine without its spirit or Flavour.
— from The School for Scandal by Richard Brinsley Sheridan

Most false: the firing was with sharp and sharpest shot: to all men it was plain that here was no sport; the rabbets and plinths of Saint-Roch Church show splintered by it, to this hour.—Singular: in old Broglie's time, six years ago, this Whiff of Grapeshot was promised; but it could not be given then, could not have profited then.
— from The French Revolution: A History by Thomas Carlyle

Colman slily said, (but it is believed Dr. Johnson did not hear him,)
— from Boswell's Life of Johnson Abridged and edited, with an introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood by James Boswell

Can you readjust the thirty-two tiles so that no two of the same colour shall still be in line?
— from Amusements in Mathematics by Henry Ernest Dudeney

hæft I. m. bond, fetter : captive, slave, servant : bondage, imprisonment, affliction , Æ: (±) seizing, thing seized , CLPs 123 6 . [ Ger.
— from A Concise Anglo-Saxon Dictionary For the Use of Students by J. R. Clark (John R. Clark) Hall

This is so even now, of course, strictly speaking, but it is not clearly enunciated, and very, very often the criminal of to-day compromises with his conscience: ‘I steal,’ he says, ‘but I don't go against the Church.
— from The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

“You think me a bad, wicked creature,” she sobbed, “but I’m not, I’m not.
— from My Lady Nobody: A Novel by Maarten Maartens

she cried suddenly, starting back in alarm as her hands encountered a human form.
— from The Baron's Sons: A Romance of the Hungarian Revolution of 1848 by Mór Jókai

I could scarcely see, but I sent the Mercédès along recklessly, stopping for nothing until we reached Ware.
— from The Motor Pirate by G. Sidney Paternoster

I have long known your worth; nay, I must confess," said she, blushing, "I have long discovered that passion for me you profess, notwithstanding those endeavours, which I am convinced were unaffected, to conceal it; and if all I can give with reason will not suffice, take reason away; and now I believe you cannot ask me what I will deny."—She uttered these words with a sweetness not to be imagined.
— from Joseph Andrews, Vol. 2 by Henry Fielding

“My heart sank for a moment, I confess,” she said, “but it never would do, you know, to let him suspect that, so I smiled away as well as I knew how, shook hands with one or two {60} women in red calico who had been ‘slicking up inside,’ they said; went in by the fire,—it was really a pleasant fire,—and, as soon as they had left us alone, I climbed into John’s lap, and, with both arms around his neck, told him that I knew we should be very happy.
— from The Gates Ajar by Elizabeth Stuart Phelps

“Come, Stacy,” said Barker, “I've only invested in shares and stocks like everybody else, and then only on the best advice I could get: like Van Loo's, for instance,—that man who was here just now, the new manager of the Empire Ditch Company; and Carter's, my own Kitty's father.
— from The Three Partners by Bret Harte

Ma te se fust conduicte selon sa bonne inclination que sa bonne affection ne se fust tousjours monstree en leur endroict et eussent este traictez comme bons et prochains parens loyaulx subgectz et tresobeissans serviteurs.
— from The Wars of Religion in France 1559-1576 The Huguenots, Catherine de Medici and Philip II by James Westfall Thompson